Meet My: Host Family

This post is a long time coming. I know, I'm so bad that as we're getting ready to say goodbye to them, I'm just introducing you to them. Of course I've posted about all of them before in little stories of our adventures over the past here, but here is your opportunity to see them.

First we have our Host Dad (X-Ray):
X-Ray, is the radiologist at our local hospital. When Hal broke his elbow we went there and he took some X-Rays of his arm. He learned English when he used to work in a border town with Thailand, but he gets very nervous when we speak English to him. Apparently his English is very good when he's drunk.

And then our Host Mom (Bookie):

We call her bookie because when we first moved in our host dad told us she just worked from home. Little did we know, those number's she's shouting on the phone every month, they're for the town lottery which she runs. Oh, and did I mention she's a loan shark? Pretty baller, eh? 

Our host mom is part of the reason why we love site. She just loves to hang out with us and be involved in anything we're doing. She has the most genuinely funny laugh I've ever heard in Cambodia. Here she is using her mortar and pestle to grind some pepper we brought back from Kampot. She makes a mean pumpkin curry, and likes pizza.

Next is our younger Host Sister (Moto Accident):

You can probably guess why we call her moto accident. Right after we moved to site she got in a moto accident out on the main road. Luckily X-Ray could come home and patch her up. She wouldn't eat anything all day except for what we gave her. We made cookies and gave her some of our favorite treats.

This is also a sweet introduction to how most Cambodians take pictures with awkwardly straight faces. Oh, and she's pretty awesome at doing nails. Here she had just done her nails, painted them red, put sparkles in the corners and then added princess stickers. The most beautiful Khmer nails ever. She graduates this year and wants to go to school to be a beautician.

And lastly we have our little Host Brother (Silenceor):
One guess as to why we call him the Silenceor...he kind of just doesn't talk. Especially to us, and especially when we first came to site. We would ask him direct questions and he would just stand there or slowly walk away. He just never really talked much in general, but this week I heard him playing with a baby. Holy moly, it was the loudest I've ever heard him be. Apparently Bookie needs to have another baby.

He may not say much, but he will try just about any western food we make, and really loves anything sweet we give him from America. He's always happy to help us bake something in our oven and enjoys the fruits of his labors.

So glad that you could meet my host family. They're really great people and we have enjoyed living with them the last year. Bookie's family lives here in town and they're all very nice to us when they see us riding around town. X-Ray's family lives up north and have a farm where they make red rice, which truly is more delicious than normal white rice. They are truly very giving people and after a year of hinting, Bookie finally bought me some matching Khmer pjs; so overall we're pretty lucky around here.

Less than one month to go in Peace Corps

We are now down to less than a month before we'll be home. There's so much I want to see and do still before we leave, but at the same time I want to spend every chance I can with my students. I have come to love Cambodia so much in the last year. They are seriously the best people I have ever known. They are so kind to let us into their homes, they go out of their way to help up, they will even give you the shoes off of their feet (I've seen it).

But I guess we've at least completed some of our mission of serving in the Peace Corps, to teach them of America, and to teach America of Cambodia. I will forever be the biggest advocate of Cambodia. I hope that you have seen somewhat of what Cambodia is like from my blog. There's so much more I want to share with you in the time I have left. Sorry if my posts become increasingly sappy.

 My sister has a couple who go to her church who served in the Peace Corps. She said whenever they can corner someone in a room they'll tell them about their Peace Corps Experience. I definitely didn't think that would be me, but it totally is going to. No doubt about it. Sorry if for the next few years everything out of my mouth is about Cambodia. I got a glimpse of it when I was in Scotland with my sister. Everything was about Cambodia. She was so nice and said, "well it should be, that's your frame of reference right now."

It's hard to start packing things away and organizing all of souvenirs that we're bringing back, but I can't wait to bring back even these small bits of Cambodia and share them with our family back there, just as we did with our Khmer family when we first arrived almost a year ago.

Why There Should Be No Shame In ET-ing

This post is a hard one to make. I guess really any post where I talk about our decision to leave the Peace Corps early is a hard one. This is especially hard as today one of my closest volunteer friends got on a plane to go home.

So when you think about the idea of ET(Early Terminate)ing you think, oh dang, that's a really personal and really hard decision, I wouldn't look down on someone for making that decision. Or would you?

I guess I don't really know how to accurately portray the feelings of shame that one feels even when they're thinking of making this decision. It's hard. It's hard that when you're struggling with this decision, that other volunteers are talking about it. It's hard that people come up to you and say I heard you're ETing when you, yourself haven't even decided what you're going to do.

I guess it's not an outright feeling of shame, like someone telling you they're disappointed in you or telling you they're ashamed of you. But it's a feeling of shame that you, the person making this really hard decision feels. I made a commitment. I made a commitment to Peace Corps, but more than that, I made a commitment to my school to be there for two years, and I'm letting them down. That's one of the biggest struggles that I've been dealing with. The shame of giving up. I don't like to give up on things that I've dedicated myself to.

What's even harder is to know when it's right to give up, to look past those feelings of shame and think will I get more out being here, or being home; will I be happier if I stay or if I go? Will I actually be helpful to my community if I stay here unhappy? For us when Hal got the scholarship that was the tipping point, we would be getting more out of life, and would be happier if we went home.

One of the biggest blessings to come out of this has been the amount of support we've received from everyone since making our decision. The feelings of shame while making the decision were suddenly replaced by the feelings of support from everyone around us.

I heard of a volunteer who wasn't supported by someone in her family in her decision to come here, or her decision to go home. That just broke my heart. I had a short talk with her where I tried to give her as much support as I could. I told her that it's a freaking hard decision to make, and no one but you knows if it's right, so people should support you in that decision.

 The biggest surprise of all was the support that has come from our fellow volunteers. I'm pretty sure every volunteer has thought of ETing at least once during their service. They know what it's like and what a hard decision it is to make, and they have been so kind and supportive. They have made all of this a lot easier on us.

It sucks that there's feelings of shame associated with ET-ing, but I guess that's just part of the process, and it makes the feelings of support all the more welcome. So support your volunteers, let them know you're proud of them.

China: Mutianyu Great Wall

On our very last day in China we went to see the Great Wall. We were told to go on the least smoggy day we could find, and we lucked out as our last day it was definitely less smoggy. Our train from Xain got in just before 7 a.m. We wanted to take public transportation to the wall since it was so much cheaper.  The day before we left I did some more research and realized the bus we were planning on taking, no longer operated. The 936 bus to Mutianyu has been replaced by the 867 bus (This bus only operates during the tourist season).

We took the subway to the Dong Zhi Men Bus station and a very nice Chinese woman pointed and grunted us in the right direction. To get to the area where bus 867 leaves from you must go outside the bus station and head east (turn left if you're facing away from the bus station) You're going to walk counter clock wise around the bus station. You'll head East on Dongzhimen Waida street, and then left onto Dongzhimen Outer Byway(never crossing the street) and you'll continue down that street until you feel like you're almost lost, but a bay of buses will come up, many of them heading to other tourist destinations, and bus 867 will be at the very back.

The buses leave at 7 and 8:30 and pick you up from Mutianyu at 2 and 4. It costs 16 RMB per person, each way. We had a 7 pm flight, so we planned to take the 8:30 bus and return on the 2pm bus. We found the line for the 867 bus with about 10 minutes to spare, but we had all of our bags with us. There's a little tourist booth on the lot of buses and they were very nice and let us store our bags there.

We headed off on the 2 hour bus ride and of course passed out after not sleeping on the train the night before. The bus ride was easy, and they can sell you tickets to get onto the wall that are 5 RMB Cheaper (40 RMB instead of 45) so I suggest that you buy them there. We bought some peaches (Oh peaches and nectarines, how I have missed you) and headed up to the wall.

We are poor so we skipped the tram and decided to walk up the stairs to the wall. Man, unless you're poor like us, spend that extra bit and take the tram, and save your energy for actually climbing the wall. As you can see from the picture below, the walk up to the wall is very steep and took us quite a while to get there. We ran out of time and had to take the tram down, but I've heard the toboggan is very cool also.

 But when we got there it was all totally worth it. The wall was amazingly stunning. It was so cool to just look at the surrounding mountains and watch the wall climb through the mountains off into the distance. Our plan was to walk to the Jiankou section. It's a part of the wall that's unrestored. I really wanted to make it there. I had read it was a hard climb to get there, and boy, they weren't kidding. We didn't make it all the way there, because of time, but we did get to see the wall be less restored as we drew closer to Jiankou (you can see a little bit in the last picture) Since we didn't make it, this just gives me another reason to go back.

Now enjoy the pictures and how beautiful the wall is.

Pervious Post: Xian and the Terracotta Warriors

China: Xian and the Terracotta Warriors

Days 4 and 5 we spent in Xian. We really wanted to see the Terracotta warriors while we were in China, so we took the night train out there. The train ride was alright, and we made it there around 6:30 in the morning. Straight away we went to buy our train tickets back to Beijing. They also have someone who speaks English at the Xian train station. Bad news, their sleeper trains were sold out. Even more bad news their seats were sold out. We conversed and went back to the window and she said oh yes, seats, and gave us our tickets. If your ticket doesn't have a seat number, don't buy it! Even thought she said we had seats, we did in fact not. We got really lucky and somehow ended up with one seat, and I slept on the floor of the train in the isle at Hal's feet.

Now back to arriving in Xian. We tried to navigate the local bus system looking for the #14 bus that was supposed to go close to our hotel. Fail. The Bestay Express. I had read online, and it had great views, but their website was really confusing and we couldn't figure out which room to book, so we just showed up, after we getting lost first. The hotel was fine, it was like a step down from a Holiday Inn, so it was nice to us. We showered and headed out to find the bus to the Terracotta warriors.

We read online to look for tourist bus #5 also known as 306. There is a parking lot directly east of the train station, outside of the wall. Look for bus #(5) 306. There will be lots of others there who try and get you on their bus, but stick with this one. It's 7 RMB each way. They will drop you off in the parking lot next to the terracotta warriors, and will pick you up there also. They just have lots of buses coming and going, so there should always be one bus waiting.

The tickets to get into the terracotta warriors are expensive compared to the rest of the tourist attractions in China. It was 150 RMB, the Great Wall is 1/3 of that! Well, if you're a student, or have a card that even remotely looks like a student ID, you get half price at 75 RMB. We're volunteers, we're poorer than students, but we didn't have any of our old student ID cards...so we used our Peace Corps Medical card, and that got us in.

We had heard the warriors were cheesy and to not get our hopes too high, so we didn't. Well, they were awesome. I was shocked at how many of them there are. Maybe it's because our expectations were low, but we both really enjoyed all 3 pits. It was so cool how different all of the warriors were, their hair styles and their facial expressions were so unique.

After the warriors we headed back to the hotel, and then headed to the Muslim market. Other PCVs had recommended it. It's really close to the Bell and Drum towers, so we got to see those too, but sorry no pictures. The market is definitely worth a visit if you want some cheap souvenirs.

Our last day we got rained out from going up on the Xian City Wall. You should go if you have time, the wall is beautiful.

Previous Post: Pearl Market and Sleeper Train to Xian

Next Post: The Great Wall: Mutianyu

That time we tried Durien

Have you ever heard of durien?

It's supposed to be the world's stinkiest fruit. It's supposed to smell awful and taste awful, and the western world doesn't understand why Asia loves it so much. Well when you grow up eating it, why should it taste really disgusting to you?

Hal and I bought a durien for our host family. They're really big, and people love them, therefore they're expensive. We bought a small one to try and be nice and share with our family. Our host mom cut it open and everyone was excited. It was unripe and everyone was real disappointed. Fail.

We came home about a week later and Bookie had bought another one. This one, she said was ripe. We watched her cut into it and the look of delight on their faces at the ripeness. We prepared our selves for the awful smell everyone said would come. Either we've smelled awful things in Asia and gotten used to them, or it just smells a lot like jackfruit, which doesn't smell great, just kind of too sweet, like overripe.

So we tried it. I didn't love it, but it was edible. In fact...Hal kind of liked it.
Ruling: Eh, I've had worse.

China: Pearl Market and Sleeper Train to Xian

We were kind of in a hurry because we also wanted to go to the Pearl Market (Hong Qiao) They have a ton of pearls for super cheap and a ton of other cool souvenirs for cheap. To get there take subway line 5 to Tiantandongmen Station and go through the North East Exit, and you should see it in front of you. The pearls were on the 2nd or 3rd floor. To tell if their real, ask them to scratch them. If they're real you can scratch off some pearl-ness, but they won't looked like they've been scratched at all. They'll still look beautiful and shiny.

 The market was a lot of fun, and after overpaying for a teapot set Hal got in his bargaining groove and we got better prices on things. The biggest tip I can give is to think of how much you are willing to pay and don't move from there. They'll just keep coming down. For some chopsticks, the lady wanted 150 RMB, and we ended up paying 35 RMB for it. Just stick to your guns and they'll come way down.

We got back on the subway and made it to pick up our bags. We were hoping to get to the station almost an hour early. Because the subway takes a deceivingly long time we were running behind. We even took a bus from the subway line Military Station to the Beijing West Railway Station to save time. We ran through the station until I thought I couldn't run anymore. The gate was closing and we just made it inside. We ran to each train car and were told to go to the next (silly us didn't look at the ticket to see which car we were in) and we literally made it on the train with a minute to spare before it pulled out. Call us the last minute Morgans.

We took a hard sleeper to Xian and since we didn't buy our tickets early enough we were on the top bunk where there's not enough room to sit up all the way. We made some friends with some little kids on the train. They spoke a tiny bit of English. I was so surprised when the little girl said to me "no body loves me, not even my mother." Who in the world taught her that?

After about on hour on the train and we had made friendlies with this adorable family, I told Hal I thought we were "train folk." He disagreed, but after our next train ride...I think you have to admit that we are basically train folk.

We were pretty close to the door of the train car where everyone went to smoke, and since the doors were open the smoke just came into the train car. I hate the smell of smoke! Hal ended up shutting the door a bunch of times to try and keep it out. The train ride went fine and we both got a few hours of sleep on our 11 hour train ride.

Previous Post: Summer Palace
Next Post: Xian and Terracotta Warriors

China: Summer Palace

Day 3 in Beijing might have been my favorite day. We slept in a bit and then checked out of our hotel, but left our bags there so we didn't have to carry them all day before our night train to Xian.

We headed out for the day to the Summer Palace. This was my second favorite thing that we did in Beijing. I wish we had had more time to explore there. If we had had another day I would have gone back and explored more. We decided on the 30 CYN pass, and to not pay double that to go inside the buildings. The grounds were gorgeous enough for us. We ended up walking up the east side of the grounds and along the north side. We followed the signs for the North Gate and exited there, as it was close to another subway stop. Take Line 4 to Beigongmen Station and it is very close to the North Palace Gate.

Next post: Pearl Market and Night Train to Xian
Previous Post: Train Station and Olympic Buildings

China: Olympic Buildings and Railway Station

On our second day of our time in Beijing we realized we needed to buy our train tickets to Xian...as we were supposed to leave tomorrow. Seat 61 was very helpful for planning our trip by train. So we headed out  to try and find the West Railway Station, which is the station that most trains leave from. It's currently not attached to the rest of the subway lines, so we got off at the Military Museum subway stop, which was supposed to be the closest one to the station.

We wandered around lost for a while, and then we started to noticed suitcases. We followed them into the subway station, and then we followed them back out. We followed them all the way to the railway station. It took us probably 20-30 minutes to walk there. And oh man, I knew crowds were bad in China, I had seen them and been in them, but it was the most crowded space I've ever been in. (Don't walk there! Stand on the North side of the road and take Bus #802, 21, or 320. We took 320 there later and it worked great.)

They have one window which is English Speaking and the guy was helpful. We watched two Chinese men get into a really bad fight, it was awkward and horrible. We realized we didn't have enough cash to buy both our ticket there and our return, so we just bought the tickets there and figured we'd buy the others when we got to Xian. We chose a hard sleeper since we're poor and the awesome soft sleeper Z trains are more expensive. Then we booked it out of that horribly crowded awful place.

We only had the afternoon left since finding the station took so long so we decided to head to the Olympic Buildings which we had heard were really cool. To get there take Subway Line 8 to Olympic Sports Center.

They were really cool. It was a pretty smoggy day, so you couldn't see them that well until you were close to them, but they're free to visit and totally worth it if you have some time.

 We bought this little flying dragon for super cheap, it's really cool. A rubber band winds it up and when it throw it and it unwinds it flaps it's wings. We gave it to Silencor (our host brother) and he loves it.

Across from the nest is the swimming cube. it looks so cool. We couldn't figure out if you could go in and look without paying, so we didn't go in. it's like $25 for adults to swim and we didn't have our swimming suits on us. Then I saw this on failblog. It's what they've converted the inside of the cube to be. Now I wish we had gone inside!

The end of the Olympic park is the Olympic Green Subway station. Across from this is a little shopping mall. In the basement there's a great grocery store where we bought some Chinese candies to try. Also at the exit there's a great frozen yogurt place that was really cheap.

Next Post: Summer Palace
Previous Post: Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square

China: Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square

Our very first day in China started bright and early with our flight landing in Beijing around 6:30 in the morning. We were both pretty tired after our red eye flight, but somehow managed to find our way to our hotel, The Red Lantern House. Our hotel was great. I forgot to take pictures, but it's beautiful inside and I had the best shower I've had in a year there. It's easy to get to, just take line 4 of the subway and get off at Ping An'li station, walk north for about 500 meters and turn left onto ZengJue Houtong (There's a Diary Queen on the corner). I would totally recommend this hostel to anyone. The staff were really nice, and it was in a good part of the city.

After checking in and a meltingly lovely shower we headed out to The Forbidden Palace. It's also very easy to get to. It's right next to Tienanmen Square, for which there are 2 stops on Line 1 of the subway. We went on a weekday, but the crowds were still large. It was mostly full of Chinese tourists while we were there. Both of us were impressed by how big the palace grounds were. It just never seemed to end. There was no way we could see everything so we kind of just wandered around to anything that caught our eye and eventually made our way to the exit, which is really far from the entrance and Tienanmen Square. We ended up walking most of the way back and it took quite a while.

 We were told that there was a great Peking Duck place across from the East side of Tienamen Square, and to look for the  big duck statue. Tienanmen Square is HUGE. It's so big. We were lucky though and the duck statue gave it away. It was expensive for a whole duck, and they don't do half a duck, and I wasn't going to eat the duck, so Hal ended up ordering the Sauteed Duck with Seasonal Vegetables, and he freaking loved it. He didn't stop talking about it for the rest of the trip, so if you want some Peking duck, go there.

Next Post: Olympic Buildings and Railway Station
Previous Post: Overview of China

Overview of our trip to China

Hal and I are back safely and soundly from our amazing trip to China. It seriously was one of the best trips that we've ever been on. We had a blast the entire time!

I'll definitely do individual posts for all of the things we did, but I thought I'd do a brief overview in case you're wondering what to do on your trip to China, with some helpful tips.

Day 1: Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square
Day 2: Train Station and Olympic Buildings
Day 3: Summer Palace and Pearl Market and travel to Xi'an
Day 4: Terracotta Warriors
Day 5: Sleep In and Wander around Xian and travel back to Beijing
Day 6: The Great Wall at Mutianyu and fly home

Tips:
1. Chinese don't like lines. If you don't fight to hold your spot in line you'll definitely get pushed out of the way and be the last one anywhere.
2. Buy your train tickets days in advance, and if they try to sell you a train ticket without a seat number, that means you're standing, so don't do it and get another train. We are poor and didn't went to the station ourselves to save money, but pay the extra $5 and have someone book them for you, and then you can make sure they're booked early. And get to the station early!
3. Look everything up before you go. Their internet is filtered, and google is so hard to use when you find the link for the information you need, and the page won't load because it's blocked.  Look up all of the routes and information you might need ahead of time.
4. You might want to bring a scarf or something to cover your face with sometimes. Everyone smokes, and I got really tired of smelling it all of the time (especially on the train)
5. Chinese people spit (read hawk loogies) all the time. beware of the spit.
6. If you're concerned about finding where you're going, find a way to get it written in Chinese to show to people on the street, or the bus, or wherever you are.
7. Take local transport over doing group tours. It will save you so much money! Our hotel charged $53 to go to the wall. We payed around $12 round trip(including the ticket to get onto the wall). You also get a little more of the real Chinese experience this way.
8. Beware of people who approach you at popular tourist destinations and speak English. They are usually trying to scam you.
9. Eat street food and eat yogurt you see in little brown ceramic jars everywhere. They're delicious!
10. Always barter. They start real real high, so my biggest tip is to pick how much you want to pay and don't budge from that number. If you start coming up then they know you're willing to pay more. Hal bartered for some chopsticks, the lady wanted 150 RMB for them, Hal said 40. He said 40 for probably close to 10 minutes before she agreed, and then he only had 35 RMB on him, and she gave it to him for 35 RMB. Stick to your guns, and they'll come way down.

And now I will awe you with beautiful pictures of China.